


how to lose a guy in thirty seconds

by silentwalrus



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexuality, Comedy, Kink Exploration, M/M, Plucky Romcom Heroine Bucky Barnes, Pro Dom Steve Rogers, Romance, boinking, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-12-27 04:07:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18296510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus
Summary: Bucky Barnes is living his best life, or he would if his love life weren’t such a goddamn clown show. Then he and Steve decide to give that whole ‘with benefits’ thing a go. Cue prank war, social security fraud, Lana Del Rey philosophies & Sharon totally owning everybody in paintball.  It's happily ever after or bust.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> tags will be updated as story progresses. experimenting with tiny chapters to see if that makes the words come out faster
> 
> this is an unfinished chaptered work but i can't figure out how to fix the "complete, 1/1" until i add another chapter so: here is the warning i guess

His name is Geffrey. “With a G,” he told Bucky helpfully, around four hours ago. Bucky already knew that, because this blind date isn’t so much blind as stumbling around looking for the eye wash station. That’s also about as much fun as they’ve been having. It’s not that Bucky has a problem with videogames, or dudes who play them, but he thinks it’s fair to say that having the entire plot of Deus Ex Whateverthefuck explained in excruciating detail is too much for anyone to withstand. He didn’t even know video games _had_ plots. He does now, and regrets it.

“Hey, speaking of, do you listen to music?” Bucky interrupts, when Geffrey with a G has briefly strayed from his course to wax rhapsodic about how realistic all the borg-punching sound effects are. It might not have been so bad, only this guy has been making eyes all night on top of it, and Bucky tuned out after the first fifteen minutes but he’s pretty sure there have been sexual innuendos manifesting somewhere in that word salad, if Geffrey’s expression is anything to go by. Bucky’s only made it this far because the salmon he ordered was actually really good, but now it’s gone and so is the last of Bucky’s patience.

“Music?” Geffrey says, blinking.

“Music,” Bucky says. “You like gothstep? I _love_ gothstep.”

“Uh… sure,” Geffrey with a G says. “What’s gothst- ”

“It’s just _so_ great, man, you’ll love it,” Bucky promises, taking his phone out and scrolling through vigorously. “You know what? I should just show you. I have this great playlist, it’s only fifteen hours, it’s got _all_ my favorite songs.”

“Oh… Now?”

“Right now. All at once. If we get interrupted we have to start over. It’s the only way to get the full experience.”

Geffrey the G-man blinks, but it’s not long before he once again looks way too hungry for what’s on Bucky’s menu. “We can go listen in my car,” he suggests.

“Absolutely not,” says Bucky, who has learned to recognize the signs through a lot of unfortunately relevant experience. “Inferior acoustics. We’ll listen right here,” he says, putting his phone on the table and making desperate hand signals to the waiter from behind the tablecloth.  

“Uh… wow…” Geffrey manages, as the phone starts screeching and hooting, then rallies impressively. “Which one’s your favorite? How about you uh - just show me that one?”

“You don’t like gothstep?” Bucky wrinkles his brow in deep consternation, then relaxes it back again. The waiter has definitely noticed their table and is banging out their check. “That’s okay. I also have this compilation mix of lesser-known unreleased tracks by white rappers.”

“Oh… wow…”

“It’s only seven hours long, but honestly that’s a failing of the niche.” Bucky sighs despondently for effect. “There’s… there’s just not that many white rappers out there.”

“Gosh.”

“Yeah. But hey! Be the change you wanna see in the world, right?”

“Oh, totally -”

“That’s why I’m making my own. I got a Soundcloud and everything. Hey, we should listen to _that.”_

“Yeah, totally, let me just take this call,” Geffrey says, digging out his own phone and struggling up from the booth.

The second he turns his back, Bucky snags his phone, throws down two twenties and eels out from behind the table. He’s out the front door in record time, though not fast enough not to see the extremely judgmental look the waiter gives him.

Bucky can live with it. He left a fifteen dollar tip.  

-o-

“I have to change my phone again,” Bucky announces, dropping down in the booth next to Steve and immediately taking one of his french fries.

“Poor baby,” Steve says sarcastically, but puts his arm around Bucky all the same. “Did you go on a date again?”

“Yes,” Bucky says. “Spare me the lecture. It was that guy, the one from the thing.”

“That guy from the thing,” Sam says from the other side of the table, eyebrows rising.

“The vendor guy from that expo you went to?” Steve says.

“Yeah, him. Geffrey with a G.”

Sam squints at Steve. “How’d you get _that_ from _that?”_

“I speak fluent Bucky,” Steve says.

“Yikes,” Sam says. “Also, dude, learn to use the block feature.”

“Can’t,” Bucky says through his fries. “Vendor guy. Work. Bad enough I agreed to the date.”

Sam narrows his eyes at both of them from over the astonishing amount of onion rings on his plate. “Why _did_ you agree to the date?”

“Because he wants to date,” Steve says.

“Because nerds can smell blood in the water a mile off, and I was surrounded by piranhas,” Bucky says. “He wouldn’t shut up about some video game. And he was kinda… forward. I’m pretty sure he said he wouldn’t mind seeing me in “Bayonetta gear”, whatever the fuck that is, but I can’t be sure because at that point I was busy trying to count my own nose hairs by feel. So then I talked about my Soundcloud until he faked a call.” Bucky wrinkles his nose. “Also, he had a car? In the city? That’s just not right?”

“Geez,” Steve says.

“That doesn’t seem… horrible,” Sam says. “Like, annoying, sure, but I don’t care what he’s yapping about if I just wanna fuck him.”

“He had the eyes,” Bucky says darkly.

“The eyes,” Sam repeats, in what Bucky feels is an unfairly judgmental tone.

Steve glances at Bucky, then back at Sam. “Bucky’s kind of...catnip,” he says. “For crazy people. We’ve learned it’s best to head them off at the pass.”

_“Catnip?”_

“Catnip.”

“What… kind… of crazy people,” Sam says, already looking like he regrets asking.

“They all seem so normal at first,” Bucky mourns. “And, y’know, you never know! What if they turn out really cool! What if I make a friend! And it’s not like I grab random people off the _street._ It’s all ‘James you’d love her!’ and ‘James he’s just your type!’ and all my coworkers _introduce_ me to people and - suddenly it all spirals outwards - ”

“Uh huh,” Sam says skeptically.

“It actually is, unfortunately, that bad,” Steve says.

“In high school I learned parkour _by accident,_ ” Bucky says. “This guy - my _first_ stalker - kept following me and getting up on the roofs was the only way to get away.”

“Your _first_ stalker?”

“Yeah. He wasn’t great at it. I think he thought he was just bullying me. I mean, obviously Steve tried to fight the guy every week, but that was kinda hard given he only came up to his elbow -”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, Stevie didn’t always look like Calvin Klein pays him to wear underpants,” Bucky says.

“Puberty hit me with a two-by-four,” Steve explains. “Then the Army hit me with a lot of other things.”

“Anyway, the guy didn’t think he was my stalker, he was just doing all the things a stalker does because he was obsessed with me -”

“Lot of repressed homosexual urges going on there,” Steve says sagely.

“- yeah, that, whatever, and like, I wish I could say I was exaggerating. I _wish_ this was my ego talking. My high school counselor used to keep calling me to his office for “college consultations” and talking about how I should totally go into modelling.”

Sam is staring at them with his mouth open. “Dude, I’m sorry, you are _not_ that hot.”

“I _know,”_ Bucky says emphatically, waving a french fry. “I mean, I didn’t used to look like this either, I was a lot smaller then -”

“Two dollar twink,” Steve murmurs.

“Thank you, Steven Grant, and let me remind you that if I was two dollars you were maybe twenty five cents. Anyway. Dating was bad enough then when it was just old dudes wall to wall wanting me to call them daddy. And now, with the arm and the whole, you know, Army thing, people are either weird or creepy or creepy weird about it and I just do not have the time.”

Sam squints at him. “Steve is _way_ more famous than you are.”

“Yeah, but _he_ learned parkour to run away from reporters,” Bucky says.

“Steve has great reasons for becoming a cryptid,” Steve says, dunking a fry in mustard. “Fame and sex work only go great together if you’re not doing anything illegal.”

“Don’t pretend you’re not dreaming of the day you get invited to the GOP convention so you can drop the bombshell then,” Sam tells him. “But we’re talking about _you_ right now, B-boy. Shouldn’t being famous make it easier to date?”

 _“You’d think so,”_ Bucky says. “But _no._ It just makes things _weird._ All the, like, normal weird famous shit was bad enough, but then Natasha uploaded that vine of compilations of me doing the hair thing. And it went viral _._ Now I’m a goddamn _meme_ and people _recognize_ me. I’m the fucking Rapunzel Guy.”

“L’Oreal emailed him,” Steve admits. “They wanted to do an endorsement promotional thing. Then I had to email them back a really polite ‘hell no’ because _Bucky’s_ response was to scream and hide under the kitchen table -”

“I’d just had surgery! I was high off my tits on Propofol, you can’t _tell me these things_ in such a sensitive state -”

“You weren’t ready for fame,” Steve says kindly.

“Well - yeah!” Bucky stuffs more french fries in his mouth.  

“First off, if you turned down L’Oreal money, you don’t deserve L’Oreal money,” Sam says. “Secondly, what hair thing?”

Bucky sighs, pulls his hairtie off and shakes his bun out. “This hair thing.”

Sam stares at him for a full five seconds with his mouth open.

“Natasha set it to slow motion,” Steve says helpfully. “It’s got over a million replays and an hour-long version on YouTube.”

“People set it to different songs, or different speeds, or film themselves doing it to that goddamn eighties porn sax Natasha used,” Bucky grumbles, putting his hair back up. “People put stuff on their heads and shake it off. The ten-hour version is in like seven different ASMR playlists. Last week Natasha showed me a story somebody wrote about _me_ , _Rapunzel Guy,_ having _very alarming sex_ with someone from a _British boy band -_ ”

“Anyway,” Steve says, over Sam’s laughter. “That made it exponentially worse. If you’re famous on Vine you get laughed at by adults and followed by twelve-year-olds on the street.”

“Man, why do you still date?” Sam says.

“Well, you see, Sam, when I was a little bitty baby, three fairies came to my parents’ kingdom and cursed me with great hair, a great ass and a great big case of terminal optimism,” Bucky says sourly.

“The total inability to say no came later, but seems pretty much just as permanent,” Steve adds cheerfully. Bucky elbows him.  

“And so far… it’s all been a cartoon disaster,” Sam says slowly.

“Catnip,” Steve says, tapping two onion rings together. “Crazy people.”

“And what, you’re immune?”

“Oh, Steve’s definitely crazy people,” Bucky says. “He just doesn’t want to fuck me. Or lock me in a basement and reenact Saw III _,_ but mainly the not-fucking thing.”

Steve grins. “Totally asexual. It’s my superpower.”

“You’re crazy people too,” Bucky tells Sam. “Except I know _you_ won’t fuck me because you’re too busy making my life a living hell.”

Sam’s face splits into an evil grin. “So you got the singing telegram.”

“Yes,” Bucky says darkly. “I did. Did you come up with those lyrics yourself, or is there someone out there whose name happens to rhyme with Bucky and is somehow living a worse life than mine?”

“All me, baby,” Sam says, still grinning. Sam and Bucky met when Sam was still Steve’s New Friend and Bucky was only a week out of the hospital. That meant he got startled awake when Sam entered their apartment to grab Steve’s forgotten wallet, mistook him for an intruder, punched him in the face and then puked all over his shoes. Since at that point Bucky had all the stopping power of a wet french fry, Sam wasn’t exactly hurt, but it wasn’t a stellar first impression either.

Bucky remembers none of this, since at that point he and lucid consciousness were only incidental acquaintances. That is, he _was_ lucid for stretches at a time, but due to drug fog and other fun neurochemical imbalances he remembers maybe four percent of those three and a half months. _Sam,_ however, remembers it perfectly, and while at the time he was very understanding, he did make sure to get back at Bucky by buying a Barbie Butterfly Fairy Facepaint Step-By-Step kit (Five Shades of Glitter! Non-toxic Pearlescent Paint!) and executing it flawlessly on Bucky the next time he found him asleep on the couch.

Thus was the face that launched a thousand pranks and began the Barnes-Wilson war. Bucky’s pretty sure Natasha had that photo as her profile picture for like two months. Bucky, who is not too ashamed to admit he had been thrilled that Steve’s new friend liked him, can’t find it in him to regret that they haven’t really been able to stop escalating since. “Thank you for your generous contribution to my workplace reputation,” Bucky tells Sam. “I am definitely going to get promoted now. Steve, tell me what Sam fears and hates most so I can obliterate him emotionally.”

“Ball’s in your court, Buck,” Steve says, amused. He thinks it’s all hilarious, because for him this shit’s basically free cable. “I’m not here to take sides.”

“I _live_ with you,” Bucky reminds him. “Wilson doesn’t. It’s in your own interests to sell him out. If I suffer, so do you.”

“Try me,” Steve says, in that amused voice that’s made Bucky want to pour ketchup in his hair since they were nine.

Luckily for him the waitress chooses that moment to swing by. “Everything okay over here?” she says, then, in a very different voice, “Hey, aren’t you the Rapunzel guy?”

Bucky tries to calculate his chances of successful denial. Sam stares at the waitress in dawning wonder, then says, “Yes. Yes he is. You want a photo?”

“Actually, yeah, that’d be cool,” she says, starting to blush a little.

“Just step right up,” Sam says. “Come on, B-boy. Pay your Youtube taxes.”

Bucky, publicly cornered, really does not have a choice. He tries to smile in a normal human way at the waitress, because it’s not _her_ fault everyone he knows is a dick, but then hurriedly reels it back when she starts getting the Look. Sam’s grinning and gesturing pointedly, accepting the girl’s phone, so Bucky gingerly puts his arm around her and tries not to look like he hates his life.

“You’re a lot more, uh, swole in real life,” she says as Sam snaps way too many photos.

“Thanks,” Bucky says miserably.

“He works out,” Sam says, like a dog trainer pointing out a particularly fine quality on his poodle.

“He’s also not done with his antibiotics course,” Steve says, in a voice that oh-so-incidentally carries. “C’mon, Buck, you know you gotta take them with every meal. Chlamydia doesn’t just go away on its own.”

“Right, yes, absolutely,” Bucky says gratefully, lurching back to the table when the waitress steps abruptly away from him. “Gotta take my chlamydia pills, hoo boy. Yes I do.”

“Oh, uh. Thanks,” the waitress says, taking her phone back from Sam, then gives a hurried wave and decides it’s past time to go check on another table. Steve pats Bucky’s shoulder consolingly and lets him crawl over his legs so he can install himself in the corner, Steve now a buffer zone between him and anybody else who might recognize the fame-claiming.

Sam’s staring at them. “Wow,” he says. “Just… wow. You _sure_ you want to date, man?”

“I want to date the _right_ person,” Bucky huffs, poking at Steve’s fries. ‘Somebody who recognizes me from Natasha’s cyberterrorism portfolio and thinks I’m ‘swole’ is not really sending me a lot of signals of compatibility.”

“It’s really not worth it to go through the whole creeper, stalker, obsessed limpet thing in any depth,” Steve tells Sam, patting Bucky’s knee. “Better to just scare them off at the jump.”

“You do this a lot, huh,” Sam says, eyeing Steve.

“I could write a book,” Bucky mumbles, slumping down to minimize the distance between mouth and french fry cache and putting his chin onto his arms. “How To Lose A Guy In Thirty Seconds. ‘If these methods don’t work for you, congratulations! Your love life is actually shittier than mine. Also, look into restraining orders.’”


	2. Chapter 2

Everything they told Sam is true. Ever since three year old Bucky got picked up by some guy in the park and carried for nearly four blocks before Bucky’s mom caught up and punched the guy through a CVS window, Bucky has been dealing with a frankly unreasonable number of similar incidents. As far as Bucky can tell there hadn’t been anything that made him more desirable for these sorts of things than any other kid, but apparently there was a glaring neon sign over his head that said  _ PICK ME, PEDOPHILES!  _ And Bucky’s parents had enacted some pretty draconic measures accordingly. 

This wouldn’t really have been a problem, because Bucky was the kind of wild teen that was afraid of weed and got excited about math homework. The only fly in the ointment was that his best friend was also Steve Rogers. 

Steve Rogers was not afraid of weed, cops or anything else, up to and including grievous bodily harm and arson. He definitely wasn’t afraid of Bucky’s parents. And since at the time Steve looked like an anemic dandelion, Bucky’s parents hadn’t realized that there was anything to be concerned about. They actively encouraged Bucky spending time with the nice Rogers boy, who looked like a very indoor child and not at all like someone who is permanently teetering on the brink of going completely feral. 

Fortunately for everyone, Steve’s reactions to anyone approaching Bucky ever existed only on the very narrow range between “verbal incineration” and “attack on sight”, so despite being introduced to the concept of “lying to your parents about everything, forever, literally all the time” Bucky was actually pretty safe with Steve. They joined Boy Scouts, got kicked out of Boy Scouts (“It totally wasn’t Bucky’s fault, Mrs. Barnes, that other boy _pushed him -”,_ “Steve was just trying to help, Mom, I had to - Steve wasn’t, he’s not - y’know - _tall -),_ went to summer camp, went to swim practice, went to detention, went to the YMCA, and went to Steve’s apartment, where Mrs. Rogers, head nurse at the NYU Langone ER, showed them how to disinfect things correctly and fully understood what Mr. and Mrs. Barnes didn’t, namely that her son was a reincarnated barbarian warlord who was ready, willing and able to break a grown man’s nose with his inhaler. 

And  _ then  _ they both joined the Army. 

Bucky had been operating his life on the linear model of Brooklyn Tech > NYU probably > some kind of engineering master’s > some random office job that may or may not include hard hat time, and his prospects were good but come senior year not quite good enough. His parents weren’t hurting financially, but Bucky had three sisters who  _ also  _ had good prospects and would probably need college money more than he did, and, well, Steve was pretty fucking hype about the Army at the time, so Bucky thought hey, why not? His prospects were good in the Army, too, except they paid  _ him  _ money to go to class and only wanted a few years of his life in return. 

And there was no way in hell  _ Steve  _ could do college without Army money, so off they went. They did college, then Basic, then OCS, then Ranger school, then Bucky didn’t see Steve for a whole year, then they got deployed, and  _ then  _ Steve showed up at fucking Bagram **,** looking like three Steves melded together into one massive second lieutenant with the world’s evillest grin and a sheaf of orders that somehow got him assigned to Bucky’s unit. Cue three years of absolute nonsense where Steve became a captain, Bucky his lieutenant and their unit a pack of idiots sent to do god knows what in the sandbox.

They got the shine dinged off, of course. Steve especially went through a bit of a one-eighty. His dad had been a Ranger, and the Rogers had a Purple Heart on the dresser of the one-bedroom apartment where Steve slept in the living room his whole life. The longer Steve was deployed the more he got that flat-eyebrowed hard-mouthed i’m-not-enjoying-this-and-soon-neither-will-any-of-you look on his face, which Bucky and the guys mostly dealt with by relentlessly shouting at Steve to run for Senate whenever he got too involved in his rants. 

It curbed most of the more self-defeating crusading, anyway. Shit needed fixing, sure, but not at the cost of Steve pissing off a superior officer so bad and so high up that their unit got sent on back-to-back recon missions whose explicit objective might as well be ‘contract malaria and die, you insubordinate fuckheads’. 

Bucky tried not to think about it. He tries not to think about it  _ now _ , honestly. It’s hard to know what you’re getting into regardless of what it is when you’re eighteen and it’s pointless to get stuck thinking about what might’ve been instead, but - well. He joined the Army. His job was to keep his head down, help Steve, save his money so his parents wouldn’t have another mouth to feed when he got shipped home for the last time and stay alive so that he could get shipped home in an extremely uncomfortable airline seat and not in a box. 

And then there was that goddamn thing with the embassy, and suddenly they were all  _ heeeroes,  _ which made for a pretty annoying experience internally even if being deployed mostly spared them the stateside hubbub. (Amazing PR opportunity! But they’re active duty personnel! Redact their records or hand out a high-res photo to every news network? Redact their records  _ and  _ hand out a photo to every news network? Make them sit through one billion unbearable press trainings? Yes, that last one for sure. The more offensively ugly Army powerpoints they’re shown the better. Rangers can take it. Hooah.)

Bucky can’t help but feel slightly guilty, since he basically got to die his way out of ninety percent of  _ that _ aftermath and has been using Steve’s press-evading skills to avoid Aftermath Number Two. The only thing Steve’ll speak to the press about is veteran affairs, and even then only by @ing reporters on his verified Captain S.G. Rogers Twitter account. The Army has tried threatening Steve with everything they have, but what they have isn’t much and Steve doesn’t give a shit if his benefits get a really comprehensive bureaucratic revengefucking. Peggy’s firm made it clear that they would be delighted to take on the case of Captain Rogers, should it ever come to outright legal action, and so far it hasn’t because Steve hasn’t actually breached any contracts or released any sensitive information. (Yet.) He just happens to have like fifty thousand followers and talks a lot of very credible and very informed shit on a very public platform. 

Bucky stays the hell away from that. Between YouTube and coming back from the dead and everything he’s already got more than enough of his slice of the infamy pie. 

He doesn’t think he got off too badly, honestly, though that’s entirely the fault of luck. It’s really only recently that he’s gotten really bummed about the whole crazy catnip thing, because it certainly taught him a lot as a kid. As a side effect, Bucky was a spectacular liar, ran a six-minute mile and could fit himself into an alarming number of spaces a man his size really shouldn’t be able to fit into. He was immune to embarrassment and could fake his way through most situations, up to and including lying extensively to law enforcement and a variety of federal agents. It’d actually taken him pretty far in life - all the way through the Army, into the Rangers and on to a decent career as a sniper - but after he fell off a mountain he’s started having to rely more on his math skills to take him to the next level. At least in terms of his job.

A lot is different now, especially the physical stuff. Physical therapy started as a very special kind of animal hell which he got through the same way he got through every other bullshit thing his body has had to endure - by swearing a lot and deciding that it’s good for him - and it’s definitely paid off, in that he can walk and talk and wipe ass all by himself like a big boy again. Everything is a series of leading series of questions these days: can I go up these stairs? Am I cleared for cardio? Can I sleep on my stomach without my spine deciding to mutiny? Will my skull explode if I try to do a jumping jack? Oh boy, yes it most certainly will. Back to  _ that _ drawing board!

He still plays paintball with Steve and everybody though, and  _ finally _ after months of PT he’s getting his touch back. The first couple times he played after coming back Steve would help him climb into one of the tree platforms and he’d just lay there for the duration of the game, watching everybody get their war on and occasionally giving away people’s positions via pointing and yelling.

Now, though, he’s creeping through the bushes with his very own paintball gun and his very own plans to use it. They have to go all the way out to this place in Jersey to play, but it’s worth it for the outdoor space and realistic cover. They’re playing two on two on a capture the flag, scout style; the map is a big patch of trees, scattered with plywood structures that look like they got pried out and dragged here from some kind of neon paint apocalypse dumpster. 

Sam, as the only one of them who never did ground recon professionally, is leaning into that by barricading himself in the weird treehouse and holding a bellowed conversation with everyone on the field. He’s also deploying psychological warfare, because what he’s decided to yell about is Bucky’s love life. “Gone on any dates recently, B-boy?”

Bucky is answering, since he’s still not back to full agility, and giving away his position makes sense on the basis that he’s more able to draw fire while Steve sneaks around the back. “Only with your mom!” 

“My mama wouldn’t fuck you if you shit gold and pissed cognac, white boy!” 

“Your dad would, though!” Bucky scrapes himself over a log and slithers further into the underbrush. “And don’t think I haven’t seen those test-drive looks you’ve been giving my ass!”

“I’m not attracted to you!” Sam bellows, voice echoing slightly inside the treehouse. “You’re a long-haired white guy who does math for fun!”

“Lying is a sin, Sam,” Steve calls from somewhere over on the left. Bucky automatically repositions himself and starts creeping right again to try and catch Sam in a pincer.  

“Alright! So maybe I am attracted to you!” Sam shouts. “But I don’t want to fuck you! Or date you! And I’m not going to!”

“Thank you! I appreciate that!” Bucky shouts back, then screams as Sharon somehow drops down on him from above. 

Four hours later they’re all back at Steve’s place picking over their bruises and soaking their ruined clothes. Team Falcon Punch won by virtue of Sharon ambushing Bucky, shooting him point-blank and then using him as a meat shield to back Steve into Sam’s flanking maneuver. Bucky feels it is not overkill to still be complaining about this.  

“I literally hauled your two hundred pound ass across that entire forest,” Sharon tells him. 

“I have a bruise on my ass the size of a melon,” Bucky moans.  _ “A melon, Sharon.” _

“Not like anyone’s gonna see it,” Sam says cheerfully, then highfives Sharon across Bucky’s head. 

“Claire’s gonna see that, though,” Steve says cheerfully, flicking lightly at the scratches all down the side of Sam’s neck. “Gonna have to explain your sordid affair with Mrs. Tree Branch.” 

“Oooh, who’s  _ Claire,”  _ Sharon says. Steve met Sharon through Peggy, and for a hot second it looked like something was gonna happen there until Sharon met Natasha, literally twenty minutes later, at the same party, through Steve. “Geez, Steve, you need to tell me when you aren’t the hottest blonde in the room anymore,” Natasha said, which made Sharon look her up and down and say, “Yes,” in a firm tone of voice, followed by taking Natasha’s hand and leading her upstairs. Now they’re as inseparable as they are insufferable and probably just as indestructible too, because Sharon teaches Krav Maga on the weekends at Natasha’s studio when she isn’t destroying Bucky’s body and spirit in the New Jersey wilds. 

“My girlfriend,” Sam says, looking happy and excited and extremely fucking cautious all at once, which Bucky has learned is a pretty normal look for most people about to introduce their cherished partner to Steve. Or Natasha. “Who celebrates and understands my relationship with Mrs. Tree Branch and isn’t bound by anti-leaf prejudice, thank you very much.” 

“So when do we meet her?” Sharon says, wringing out her shirt in the sink. “She sounds cool. Accepting your interspecies fetishes and all.” 

“Hey, if we’re gonna talk weird fetishes, it’s not me who’s winning  _ that  _ competition -” 

“Bring Claire to dinner,” Steve suggests, handing Sam the Neosporin. “Sharon and Natasha come over Sunday nights for Monopoly and dinner. You should come too.” 

“Who’s cooking?” Sam says suspiciously. 

Steve rolls his eyes and jerks his thumb at Bucky. Sam looks relieved. Most bachelors learn how to cook, but while Bucky can at least claim basic proficiency Steve never really moved past the “boil water, add ramen” level of competency. Bucky walked in on him eating straight mayo out of the jar once and pretty much turned around and walked back out again. He doesn’t eat like that now, at least; Bucky’s on a meal plan and since they buy groceries as a household Steve’s food just gets folded in with everything. Bucky does most of the meal prep now and makes them daily lunches, for himself because keeping to a diet is easier than picking what to eat every day and for Steve because if he doesn’t have food under his nose he’ll go twelve hours without eating, easy. 

Bucky likes cooking, sort of. It’s repetitive and orderly and was really good for his fine motor skills and boredom back when he could finally stay awake for more than an hour but was not yet at the point where he could read or watch TV or otherwise look at a screen. It didn’t exactly turn into a hobby but it did turn into a routine, and it keeps Steve from snacking on straight mayo, so that’s a success.

Like Monopoly, it’s also a great way to have people over, where Steve can sit and talk to them and Bucky can talk too while having something to do with his hands. “Trying a new recipe” and “let’s destroy each other for imaginary money” are excellent excuses to lure people into your home. 

And it’s about time Bucky called in reinforcements. It’s the most useful lesson he ever learned in the Army: never do yourself what you can make your entire unit do with you. “Yeah, bring Claire,” he says. “I’ll make something nice. Text me any allergies. We’ll even let her have the top hat piece.” 

“I’ll see if her schedule lines up,” Sam says, back to eyeing them suspiciously. 

“That’s all we ask,” Steve says, smiling his friendly open I’m-the-demographic-that-produces-the-most-serial-killers smile. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trying to add some realistic details to this sent me down a 3 hr long wiki hole about the battle of nasiriyah and the 2003 usa invasion of iraq and, just, way too much bullshit for a fic that's about bucky discovering he likes being hit with a ruler. so as usual: don't try to make any timelines add up, military "facts" in here are just whatever loose sockful of stereotypes i skimmed off the top of my head. factual inaccuracies get this bitch posted! yeet!


End file.
